


Keeper of Names

by yuletidefairy



Category: Tin Man (2007)
Genre: Amnesia, Backstory, Gen, Memories, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:45:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletidefairy/pseuds/yuletidefairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"By the time I'm done with you," Azkadellia murmured sweetly in his ear, her fingers clenched, tangled in his hair, "you won't remember your own name, let alone anyone else's."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keeper of Names

**Author's Note:**

  * For [niqaeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/gifts).



"By the time I'm done with you," Azkadellia murmured sweetly in his ear, her fingers clenched, tangled in his hair, "you won't remember your own name, let alone anyone else's."

* * *

Ambrose never knew the Queen's name.

Well, that was inaccurate. He probably had known it, at some point in his life--he didn't pay much attention to politics, but surely he'd noticed it on coinage or something. But by the time he met the Queen in person, by the time she sought him out to ask his aid, her name had already been stripped from her.

He didn't realize at first. He thought it was just misrecognition, because when he looked at her, all he could think of was her mother's name, Queen Marinza. The good Queen Marinza had died when Ambrose was a child, and he had never met her in person, but the Queen's grey hair put him in mind of the old portraits, and the Queen was far too young for grey hair, wasn't she?

"Your Majesty," he said cautiously, not quite looking at her.

"There's no need to stand on formality, Ambrose," she said.

Ambrose turned away, setting down the doohickey he'd been working on. "I don't," he said, racking his brains, "that is to say, I can't, I'm a bit absent-minded, forgetful, that is--"

"Yes," said the Queen, "that's why I've come to you."

"Oh," Ambrose said, wondering if he'd gone to the Queen with his problem, or if she had her own ways of knowing things.

(Some years before, Ambrose had been studying--heavy elements, he thought it was--and had made a discovery out of which there was no, no possible good, and a great deal of bad to be had. So he suppressed it. He'd worked out a spell to bind bits of his own memory, and to take it out of the memories of people around him, so that even though they knew he _had_ made a discovery, they'd never know what it was.)

Then Ambrose saw it, clearly: "You've taken your name out of memory."

"Yes," said the Queen.

"What _for_?" Ambrose asked.

"I was trying to take myself out of memory entirely," said the Queen, wryly.

"Oh, no," said Ambrose, "you couldn't do _that_. Too many people know you exist, what with your position. Maybe in a few generations, one could--"

"Then there's no hiding for me," said the Queen. "Well. Perhaps we can still manage it for the others. I'd like you to handle the rest of the bindings. I've a great number of people who need to become anonymous if they're to be safe, starting with my daughter."

Ambrose blinked. "I don't think a princess is going to be much easier to suppress," he said.

"She's dead, officially," said the Queen. "All I want is that no one who sees her living will realize she's not where she's supposed to be, in the ground."

"Perhaps," Ambrose muttered, "perhaps--but _she_ won't remember who she is, only vaguely, and that's, that's--"

"Can't you make the binding so that the memories are retrievable?" the Queen asked.

"Oh, yes," said Ambrose. "That'll need a living focus, though. The person casting, probably." He looked up at her. "Me, I suppose."

* * *

Ambrose never asked why the Queen had tried to take herself off the map, nor why she wanted to bind her daughter's name, or any of the others to whom she had alluded. It simply didn't occur to him. The why was not important to him, only the how: how to solve the problem. Ambrose was a problem-solver. He solved problems.

It started to come out when Ambrose had the princess tell him all about herself, because to do this sort of binding, you had to know what you were putting under lock and key, especially if you meant to be able to unlock it later. The princess (Dorothy) told him about her sister Az and apples in the forest and a witch in a cave and how Az had gone away, and the witch was walking around in her skin and had tried to kill her.

Ambrose said, "I'm going to take all that away, I promise," and looked over the little girl's head at her mother.

Ambrose wasn't particularly political, but it seemed there was a coup by possession in progress, one that had the Queen on the run, and she had dragged Ambrose right into the middle of it.

* * *

"The best thing you can do," Ambrose said, "is not take another name at all. Go nameless. If you use another name--even if it's not your birth name--in time she'll be able to use it to cast on you."

(They had shortened the princess's name to her initials. It had been a compromise.)

"No," said the princess's father. (The Prince-Consort. The Queen's husband. Brian. All these things he had shed.) "I'm the back door--if for some reason you're not there to unlock DG's memories, there has to be someone who can tell her."

(His name was bound, his identity, his rank, his ties, his world--for this man had come in crossover, from a place called Nebraska, a place no longer known by name here--but his memories he kept. That had been a neat trick for Ambrose to sort out, to suppress the memories of everyone except the subject.)

Ambrose very carefully did not ask if there was a reason he wouldn't be there. If he thought about it very much it was clear that the one person Azkadellia's witch would need to get her gnarled old claws in would be the living focus guarding the memories of the fled. Instead, Ambrose said, "You'll be putting yourself in danger. She'll be more likely to notice you."

"I'll say I'm some kind of quester or seeker or something, that I'm looking for the Queen's consort," he said. "Not that I am--or was. That way people will come to me when they're looking, but they won't expect me to _be_ what they're looking for."

"In a very short while," said Ambrose, "no one will remember the Queen had a consort. What do you want them to be looking for?"

"I'll make up a name," he said. Ambrose refrained from bursting out that _he did not understand._ "Ahamo, how's that?"

"What does it mean?" Ambrose asked sharply.

"It's the city I'm from, spelled backwards," said Ahamo.

Ambrose buried his face in his hands.

* * *

Ambrose bound the princesses' magic tutor. He bound the castle chef and the scullery maids and the ladies-in-waiting. He bound the Queen's advisors until he was the only Queen's advisor who knew his own name, and then the Queen started calling in all of her duchesses and marchionesses and countesses, and all of their children.

Court had not been so well populated in years.

"The children are the most important," the Queen said. "I cannot abandon the realm entirely and bind all my governors--but their children, their heirs, my nieces and nephews--bind them. You must bind them. As many as you can. We must safeguard all our children from the witch."

The thing she did not say was how Azkadellia could not have taken over as much of the Outer Zone as she had alone. There were traitors in the Queen's ranks. She thought the children would be innocent.

Ambrose could follow this sort of thing without anyone saying, anymore. He knew too many lost stories not to guess.

* * *

"Why don't we bind your other daughter's name?" Ambrose asked the Queen. "It wouldn't be as good as if she told me everything I needed herself, but you could tell me enough. It would--" He gestured the shape of the spell. He could see it in his mind. "Limit her power."

"It would bind my daughter, and not the witch that's possessing her," said the Queen. "Azkadellia--she's still in there. She's still fighting. My little girl--sometimes she says--no. I can't bind Azkadellia. All it would accomplish is to take away what little control she has left."

* * *

It went like this:

The nobles brought their daughters and sons to court. (Mostly daughters. "My line has always produced more daughters," said the Queen. That was a bit of history that went back to the two mothers of the line, one of whom the little lost princess was named after. Therefore that bit of history was ... inaccessible. People thought the Grey Gale was a myth. Most people didn't know the name Gale at all.)

They knew they were giving up their heirs to silence. The Queen promised them the children would be safe. Sometimes Ambrose's subjects were themselves told what was going on, sometimes not. The young ones were only told that they would be safe, that Ambrose would keep them safe. The older ones were given choice: amnesia, anonymity, the chance to hide or the chance to fight Azkadellia without her being able to call them out by name.

Ambrose danced with them. Fifteen, sixteen, twenty, twenty-five. The younger ones, four and five and ten and twelve, he did sleight-of-hand tricks for, cards and scarves up his sleeves. The older ones, he danced with. He took them aside one by one to a parlor the Queen had given him for the purpose, and he asked them to turn their souls inside out and trust him with all the intimate pieces of themselves, to keep safely locked away until Azkadellia's reign was over.

Sometimes Ambrose slept with them. Not often. He'd know, when he danced with them, whether he would or not. Sometimes they wept, giving themselves up to him and not truly believing Azkadellia's reign would ever end. Sometimes holding them close was the only way he could find to comfort them. It was usually the boys, not the girls: the girls were all determined to be regal, strong as the Queen in their resolve.

(The Queen was beginning to crumble. If no one but Ambrose noticed she was a little vague at times, it was because all their memories were swiss cheese by now. All but Ambrose's. Ambrose's head was full to bursting.)

After that, Ambrose bound their names. They slept. They woke up--not who they had been. They woke up no one.

Then they would go away. Ambrose didn't know anything about that part, where the Queen sent them, who took care of the younger ones, what they told the ones who had chosen to forget themselves.

They went away, and their parents went back to their estates in mourning, as if their children had died.

* * *

Azkadellia's spy was older than most of the heirs Ambrose was given to bind. Presumably, he came on her orders to find out what Ambrose was doing in the court, to the children, for the Queen. He did not tell Ambrose that he was Azkadellia's spy, so that part of his identity and that alone he kept. (He was the son of the Marchioness of Arol. Not the heir to that seat. That was all bound. His mother and sister never knew him for a traitor. They didn't recognize him when he was revealed as one.) He gave up his childhood and his family to Ambrose, and the only memory he had left was that he was Azkadellia's creature. He woke from his slumber knowing only that. He went back to Azkadellia and said

(This bit Ambrose can only guess at),

"Who am I? What have they done to me? Why would they do this?"

So Azkadellia came to court, because she came and went where she pleased. She did not yet dare try to depose the Queen directly, for she still feared the Queen's power. She only nibbled away at the edges of things, claimed the outlying lands and the loyalty of anyone she could seduce or scare into obeying her. Tempestuous and childlike, she came to court and threw a tantrum at her mother for ruining her plaything.

* * *

"When she takes the court, the castle," said Ambrose, "you, me, everything--" That day was on the horizon. "Will she kill me?"

"No," said the Queen. "She needs the things you know. She'll bespell you, torture you, do everything she can to break you, but never kill you. No."

Ambrose was the keeper of names. His knowledge was invaluable.

* * *

"He's nothing," Azkadellia railed, "he's an empty _shell_ , he's _zero_. You bound him. _Why?_ "

(If Ambrose ever knew what passed between the Queen and her daughter, he didn't know anymore. He didn't know if the Queen lied and threatened to bind all of Azkadellia's playthings one by one until she had a mindless, useless, worthless army, or if the Queen told the truth, said she would keep every name she had out of Azkadellia's hands, keep every cousin safe from her. Ambrose didn't even know how his name came into it.)

Ambrose only remembered when Azkadellia turned from the Queen and glared him, infantile spite and embittered hatred mixed. She looked at him, and then she turned out to all of the nobles (parents) who had come to keep their children safe.

"Do you know what he is?" Azkadellia asked the court at large, gesturing broadly at Ambrose. The leather horn sticking out of her epaulet pointed wildly askew, catching in her curls. "Do you know why my-mother-the-Queen, for as long as she may be, sends your daughters to him?"

Ambrose held very still, ramrod straight. He wasn't sure if she was casting, to get all eyes upon him, or if mere fear of her was enough to command everyone's attention.

"He's a soul collector," Azkadellia told them, voice low and catching. "My-mother-the-Queen thinks he's wizard enough to defeat me, so she indulges his appetites, gives him your children for his collection. Lets him eat them all up. That's where your daughters are going, when they go off with him. Is this the kind of war effort you want to support? How much of a victory would it be, when all your girls are gone? And do you honestly think that little--toad--will defeat me? Do you?"

She held her pose, pointing at him, shaking with fury, a moment longer. Then she drew up and stalked away, her long coat sweeping behind her.

Ambrose found his tongue.

"Azkadellia," he called after her, stepping down from the Queen's side. The Queen gave a shudder and laid a frail hand on his shoulder; Azkadellia whirled to stare at him. Ambrose walked out from under the Queen's hand. "Forgive me. Your Highness. I was too familiar."

"You dare speak to me?" Azkadellia hissed.

Ambrose kept walking, because the shaking in his knees would show less while he was moving. "Do you want me to take your name? Azkadellia?" He'd reached her. There was no where left to walk. There was nothing left but to look her in the eye.

"Ambrose, no," he heard the Queen utter behind him.

He knew, he knew this would unravel all her careful plans, that there would be no one to fight the witch if Azkadellia didn't inhabit her own body alongside it, but in this moment, there was only him and a frightened little girl. If he could save her, if she asked it of him, he'd take her up out of the witch's grasp and damn them all. "Souls are such fragile things," he said softly. "I promise. Yours would be safe with me."

She stared, shaking, and Ambrose could almost see the battle within her. The entire court seemed to be holding its breath--or maybe that was just him. Just him and her. And then her hand came up and struck his face, and he stumbled back, hit the ground, and she turned, and by the time he'd caught his breath she was gone.

The bruise where she wore her ring marred his cheekbone for weeks.

* * *

"You're the most powerful being in the O.Z.," Ambrose told the Queen. She could stop Azkadellia. She could stop everything that was happening. There was only one hitch: it would kill the princess.

"Not any longer," said the Queen. "I used all my power to save someone--very dear."

That was when Ambrose knew the Queen was lost to him. When she told him that as if he didn't know, as if he hadn't been the one to bind DG's name, as if the memories--the memories--

Most of the Queen's life was bound. Her court was bound. Her consort. Her history. Her kingdom. Her name.

Azkadellia was all the Queen had left, the only remnant she had clear. Azkadellia was all the Queen had left to love.

Azkadellia was here for them. The city, taken; the army, turned; the castle, breached.

It was over now.

* * *

"Tell me their names," Azkadellia wheedled. She sat on the arm of his chair, petted him, stroked his hair around the viewer probe. "Just a few of them and this will stop, this will all be over."

"I can't," Ambrose said.

"Give me her name," Azkadellia shrieked, clawing at his face, twisting his hair in her hands.

"I can't," Ambrose said. ("I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't.")

(Of all the names he had bound in trust, the one he could least give Azkadellia's was her mother's. He'd never known it. Or had he? Had he bound his own memory of knowing it? He couldn't remember what he knew anymore. But it didn't matter: all the names were bound, all the stories, and the only trigger that could open them was--elsewhere. The first binding he'd done, they were all tied to that. Azkadellia didn't even know to ask about that, yet.)

"Do you know," Azkadellia said, ever so gently, "I think I believe you." She pulled the probe from his skull and let it fall--it clattered against the floor. "If you could, you'd tell me everything you know, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you." She rubbed his head soothingly and said, "Bring in the alchemist.

"By the time I'm done with you," Azkadellia murmured sweetly in his ear, her fingers clenched, tangled in his hair, "you won't remember your own name, let alone anyone else's."

Then there was darkness.


End file.
